On Assyrian Nationalism and Unity — An Essay
Introduction
This is a conceptual piece. I am not documenting events, or pointing too much to them. The only thing I will be pointing to at length is you.
The following video recorded by an Assyrian in Assyria will frame what I want to elaborate on.
In the final segment of the video, Noel Almuradi, who works with others such as Khlapieel Benjamin on the project “Roosh” (Wake Up), points to his head and says:
“…This nation is dying from the point of view of ideas, not just the fact that our lands are being stolen, our people destitute.”
So lets talk ideas.
Nationalism
I want to first make a distinction between a nationalism of survival and a nationalism of expansion.
Many people say nationalism is generally a stupid, often murderous idea only mildly acceptable and understandably adopted by stateless, persecuted people — and they would be right, given any consultation with history. Assyrians still live under the yoke of Turkish, Arab and Kurdish nationalism which have flourished at our expense, and mostly continue to do so. Whilst all three have different natures and circumstances, we have suffered under all of them.
Genocides have frequently been conducted by nationalists. Nationalism flirts with and often installs tiered systems of citizenship and governance, or at least goads the public consciousness into taking on an outrage in its absence. Its a fundamentally stupid idea by all modern accounts and according to nearly all modern experts — so why are we so ready to identify as Assyrian nationalists?
Its easy for me: because nationalism, as I define it, does not necessarily include these negative outcomes.
When nationalists install tiered systems of citizenship and hierarchy, it indicates racism.
When nationalists claim lands which do not belong to them, it crosses over into imperialism.
When nationalists perpetrate violence against members of another group because of their identity, they regress into savages who cannot abide by basic laws to fulfill their ambitions. This is usually because the ambitions of these kind of nationalists aren’t limited to the prosperity and security of their own people, but the degradation and expulsion of others.
Take Turkey for example. It is built on the blood of those it crushed and denied with no consequence and it is free to continue its tyranny unchecked. Addressing past crimes contributes to preventing their continuation: Turkey does not think it did anything wrong in 1915, so history repeats itself today with the mass displacement and massacre of its Kurdish population.
The Turkish national consciousness is free from guilt and internal reproach. And so, their nationalism has been cultivated into one of brutal expansion, not survival — and a nationalism of expansion is one of empire building.
“Our national borders pass through Antioch and span east-ward, containing Mosul, Sulaymaniya, Kirkuk. We say: This, is our national border.”
— Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (December 28, 1919 — National Liberation Speech)
I dream of the day Turkey is finally burdened with consequence and conscience for both its past and ongoing crimes, but it is a day far into an idealized future. The list of crimes is far to long to do any justice here.
Arab nationalism has at different points in history became a monster to us all, none more poignantly than when it reached its zenith (and ultimate demise) with the Pan-Arab project undertaken in the mid-twentieth century. This involved, but was not limited to, Arabizing native MENA non-Arab populations in order to artificially homogenize an Arab, interstate identity to contain and connote language, race and later on, religion all at once. Thankfully, this project failed, but not at considerable cost: one can see the effects in charred landscapes, violent demographic change, the bastardization of naming conventions — the list goes on.
As we can see here, both Turkish and Arab nationalism are tyrannies which followed different paths: the first has warped into an endlessly deranged, paranoia fueled fight with the rest of the world, whilst the other has fragmented into billion dollar sectarian conflict — the Jihadi Olympics.
And now we come to Kurdish nationalism — which I must add, is as varied in circumstance and priorities as the people adopting it. From the trashed cities in the South East of Turkey and their desperate populations who try and resist frequent attacks by the Islamist Central Government, to the authoritarian, institutionalized theft and barbarism practiced by tribal clans in Iraq — there really is no one single, straightforward way to address the phenomenon without going off on an elaborate tangent.
Can there be something fairly neutral to say about the struggle and aspirations of tens of millions of people without being immediately sectarian and bigoted because of the constant crimes and abuses we as Assyrians have suffered at the hands of Kurds? The genocides and massacres? The frequent assassinations? The industrial scale land grabbing operations sanctioned by Kurdish courts? The confiscation of material culture and revision of history? The unwanted stewardship? The betrayals? The puppeteering? The fact 100% of Assyrian land in the region lies within what many Kurds insist on calling Kurdistan?
Actually, yes.
We must be careful to never become the monsters who have tormented us throughout history — there is a difference between building a fair, sturdy and assertive force to combat our many enemies and a belligerent, racist and irrational one. Both can be seemingly immovable, even appealing at times, but only the first is positive and sustainable. What the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) represents is the latter, heavily seasoned with corruption and sentiments of ethnic supremacy — it is an entity uninterested in forming partnerships based on mutual respect and reconciliation.
The KRG is a bottomless pit of expansionist will, headed up by bloated parasites whose egos have ballooned under Ba’athist tutelage and tactically reinforced by Western blessings. Regimes like this are prone to violent collapse, what Assyrians have to ensure is that we can protect ourselves in the chaos that will inevitably ensue. Assyrians must demonstrate better leadership than our neighbours and not re-administer their poisons to our own people, even as we walk across fields littered with our trampled memories.
Our material heritage lies largely in ruins so we must become living, breathing monuments dedicated to our national struggle.
Patriotism vs Nationalism
Assyrians are not trying to resurrect their empire, we are trying to acquire full rights to land we have continuously inhabited ever since the birth of civilization. Anything short of sympathizing with these demands, from either local actors or international ones, is down to hypocrisy and/or a lack of will — and crucially, never error in judgement on our part for repeatedly putting forward our case.
During my Masters degree, I remember attending a seminar about patriotism and nationalism, with the whole class flatly condemning nationalism whilst tentatively celebrating patriotism — they spent a lot of time defining it, creating palatable conceptual schemes around it, celebrating instances in history where patriotism heralded some great act or another.
Meanwhile, the conversation on nationalism lasted all of five minutes and it included alluding to the fancies of savages in far away lands, or the misguided frustration of confused, disillusioned Western apes.
Where did this definition draw its breath from? The idea that the typical Western state has evolved from representing an ethnic nation of people, but now basically accommodates and accepts anyone who can contribute tax to it. America is the great trope here — anyone can be fully American, because American doesn’t denote a race, but a unifying identity with sophisticated things like value systems unsullied by race or religion.
Applying this framework to crumbling ex-colonial projects whose people’s most partaken in pastime is endlessly suffering and retreating into homogenized communities is absolute folly.
The most resilient states in the Middle East thus far been those who have firmly entangled one dominant identity to ideas of statecraft and governance, often to the detriment of all other groups native to the country. Turkey is abysmal for anyone who is not a Sunni Muslim Turk. Iran promotes a Shia Muslim, Iranian identity above all others. Saudis are proud of their societal hierarchy which not only places a broad identity above all others, but specific families who embody it.
Other countries like Iraq or Syria (note: where Syrian or Iraqi doesn’t really indicate a specific ethnic identity, but a more modern, cosmopolitan one), lie mostly in ruin and engulfed by existential strife.
Emerging lands such as Kurdistan, under the grasp of the Perpetual President Massoud Barzani, have and will model itself after countries like Iran and Turkey (the latter of whom it is pitching itself as a province to under the guise of “independence” from Iraq). After all, why would you model your new state project after states which can’t guarantee or extend central government control across all of their territory — especially when this kind of autocratic control is evidenced everywhere you look within the Kurdistan Region of Iraq?
Senior people in the KRG will not spend millions of dollars in PR campaigns, conferences and hirelings to reassure and promote the idea of expanding the Kurdish territory only to then cede to the demands of people from these newly conquered lands.
All of the states listed above, new and emerging, are tyrannies. Some are just more durable and persistent than others.
Assyrians who consider themselves “patriots” are similar to the Middle Easterners we joke about privately to each other — “they were riding on camels and got off and stepped into a Mercedes” — implying that there was nothing in-between (no education, no work, no serious grafting to warrant the privilege of enjoying such luxury).
Assyrians can only be nationalists because nationalism is aspirational— this is the in-between. We don’t have a country, it has been regularly conquered by invaders. Let’s accept this now and refrain from insulting those Assyrians in Assyria who have to live under conditions of brutal occupation and neglect, much less entertain extravagant notions of patriotism to a central authority we simply don’t have, whether it in realist terms on the ground or a construction in diaspora.
Its a goal, however. I will be relieved if one day I could comfortably call myself a patriot. Until then, I have no allegiance to anything except to the Assyrian cause and whoever I judge to work genuinely for it—potentially bypassing any individual, party, or organisation which does not visibly and transparently make Assyrian interests its central preoccupation.
This is, unfortunately for now, only accommodated by nationalist sentiment.
The “Ultra-Nationalist” Fallacy
Western societies are atrophying largely because of a decrepit faith in globalized economic policy and an erosion of previously entrenched value systems — all at a time where pressure to render identities transient and unfixed is met with growing resistance from those who receive no benefit for undergoing this transformation. Regimented, flavourless education with an increasingly uniform delivery married to suffocating, ubiquitous technology breeds shrill, disaffected, pseudo-politicized youth.
Many people don’t know who they are anymore, or at least not secure with that knowledge, so they overcompensate by incessantly reinforcing identity politics in response to quasi-threats — the application of which, from either host cultures or newly arriving ones, is largely the same.
For Assyrians, reinforcing who we are is literally a matter of life and death.
A typical Western globalist-leftist agenda often promotes a “no borders” approach and unlimited freedom of movement. Ironically, these are ideas that have utterly destroyed Assyrians in our homeland, and any Assyrian attached to these ideas is privileged enough to believe in a modern utopia crafted by people whose identities and cultures are relatively secure— unlike ours.
The globalist Left are champions of the micro-oppressed. How I wish I could swap burdens if only to enjoy a special kind of relief sometimes.
Another component present here within this dominant agenda is a “progressive” abandoning of all nationalist sentiment and a disparaging of anything resembling it. Suddenly, anyone with any nationalist sentiment is inflated to “ultra-nationalist” status, when there is no such thing. Lets stop misusing words (as discussed earlier). This is why Assyrians have precious few allies among this burgeoning ideological group — they simply don’t understand why anyone would be a nationalist, mainly due to their own chronic myopia.
Yet, it is my firm belief that all Assyrians should be nationalists because we need to be in order to set the stage for individuals to take responsibility of our cultural preservation and national liberation. But herein lies a problem for me: the imperative, “should” has no legs without a harmonization between duty and desire.
What I am about to say now will annoy many people (hopefully).
Duty and Desire
People do things for themselves out of desire, not out of duty, regardless of how much we elevate the task of Assyrian nationalist work and activism.
People often say flowery things like “it is my duty to do x” to imbue the task with noble, honourable qualities and give it an importance that transcends themselves — transcends the personal. The problem is, one cannot have duties centered on oneself. One has duties to things outside of oneself: to one’s children, one’s family, one’s employer, one’s client. Duty is married to expectation, and for me, the consequences of failing one’s duty should have wider implications than merely one’s disappointment in oneself or their self-loathing and regret.
Confining (as I see it) Assyrian activism to “duty” does little to elevate it in real terms simply because we still break and fall short of our duties each and every day. Crucially, we are ready to recognize any failures pertaining to duty too — because the task at hand has been defined as so high, we can understand our failure and forgive ourselves more easily because we are inferior, not good enough, and other negative indulgences.
What people are afraid and sometimes even angry to confront is diminishing or missing desire on their part to affect change. Imagine having to be challenged regarding your desire? It’s far more uncomfortable and degrading than conceding defeat to a project greater than you (after all, the project is greater than you, that’s why you failed).
Nobody likes to think that they don’t care enough, so much its much better to label Assyrian work as born from duty, regardless of desire — after all, people often cite how awful and depressing our situation makes them feel, but plow on because of notions of duty or compulsion. I reject this in favour of trying to build a harmony between duty and desire.
I’m not proud of toil. Its important that we want to do this work as well as feeling compelled to do it, as impossible as it sounds.
Its fine to ascribe duty to these compulsions if they bear fruit — whatever gets the job done in some sense. But a more profound synthesis, both by definition and by output, can be had if people were just more honest with themselves. By doing so, we take more responsibility for our contribution (or lack thereof) to the Assyrian struggle.
Its easy to concede failure when measuring against grand ideas, but when the failure is reducible to ones own actions or desire (or lack thereof, again), its far harder to swallow personally — but that’s exactly what we must do. We must swallow this bitter pill because we must believe in what we can do individually. I don’t want to weaponize guilt here either — if you feel any by now, it was merely behind a closed mental door, not newly imparted by my writing.
Here is a quotation written about artists which in my opinion extends further to other disciplines and problems:
“Artists don’t get down to work until the pain of working is exceeded by the pain of not working.”
— Stephen De Staebler, sculptor.
That’s really how it is, isn’t it?
Unfortunately, many of our minds have become so dulled by the sheer feat of living as we do in diaspora, or being drunk with relief at our fortune of having finally escaped the hell endured by our mothers and fathers, that we can’t even imagine the pain felt by Assyrians in Assyria.
If we can’t feel the pain of Assyrians in Assyria, we will naturally be less moved to act or help in any meaningful way. And if we can’t recapture the intimate connection we have with our land, land our enemies have relentlessly tried to disconnect us from, we will never really have a home.
As I have grown older, I am more sensitive to the pain felt by Assyrians who live in tragic conditions, with no freedom or security. Its imperative that we all let ourselves become vulnerable to this pain. Being vulnerable here will energize us, we need to let this pain wash over us and allow it into our hearts.
This is where the duty I have so far dismissed should surface: the only duty we have is to fellow Assyrians in Assyria, and the only way to really feel this duty and transform it into action is by opening our hearts and minds to the very real struggle they face, or we are lost.
To the diaspora: whilst visiting the homeland and taking pictures of the beautiful scenery and feeling all kinds of warm, fanciful things is valuable as a source of fuel for action, we still go back to our comfortable homes in the West. Assyrians in Assyria see this land every day, and they see it slipping away. We must embrace our land and our people as our own and transform our intermittent tourism into a process of dogged, single-minded reclamation.
I’m in the position right now where I have to work and contribute something because its simply always painful not to. Of course, we fail every day, the key is taking personal responsibility for those failures — something we can all do, from the very bottom to the very top.
Unity
There is unity that attempts to homogenize efforts through guilt, lies, and treachery and unity which embraces differences, creative dissent and is underpinned by vociferously accepted and defend shared truths.
There is a huge difference between conformity, which is characterized by the first description, and unity: conformity is defined negatively, whereas unity should include individual agency and empowerment. Unity is a dream of infinite potential, and potential is always comforting. The appeal to capability if we were united over personal responsibility in real time is often a subconscious source of malaise.
In a normal world, unity among our Churches would be unnecessary because they would all agree on the fundamental truths of ourselves as people but disagree on denominational detail — which is normal, global phenomenon. However, in this surreal world we live in, our Churches seem to think it is right to intermingle ideas of nationhood into religious affiliation, purely for opportunistic personal gain and power. The sad thing is of course is that these are learned people who know the fundamental truths, but elect to pursue separatist agendas.
Ninos Aho said it best once during an interview:
People like Louis Sako are opportunists who take advantage of the plentiful opportunities which arise to hijack and corrupt our national narrative. Do we really want to compromise on important truths he is unwilling to champion? Of course not. And there are many, many Louis Sakos, all with their distinctive style and their respective patrons.
Here I present to you the reality that “unity”, as it is invoked pleadingly today (albeit with good intention), is a false choice.
It is a false choice when it comes to uniting with people who don’t have our national interests at heart, and it should not be used as a stick to hit people calling out such characters.
It is also a false choice when everyone eager to trumpet the call for it merely preaches to the choir. Nobody with a perspective born from either base self-interest or fed by corruption will never publicly debate or enter into dialogue with the Assyrian “ultra-nationalist” — itself an earlier, unpacked misnomer. Challenging them to flock under a united banner is like inviting a suicide bomber into your house.
The New Assyrian, a figure which rises up out of this muck, must be armed with truth and love, and driven by a desire for justice no matter the lengths that have to be taken, the groups admonished, or the leaders criticized. We need to accept that not all of us are on board with this figure of the New Assyrian, and would rather lurk in the ghettos built by our oppressors for the Old Assyrian, where they can freely roam these wastelands as kings of ash and dust.
We need a fair, rigourous compilation of our history — we need to take charge of our history once again, and not delegate this duty primarily to non-Assyrians. We once authored and chronicled the events of the civilized world because we insisted on our place at the centre of it — this is the spirit we must channel if we are to rebuild not only the civilisation and culture we always pride ourselves on, but ensure its continuation and restore its dignity. The New Assyrian embraces this task.
We simply cannot keep relying on others to fix our problems. Yes, they owe us and can contribute to solutions, but we owe it to ourselves far more to stand in the vanguard.
The work of an Assyrian nationalist is arduous and taxing, even if its something you do alongside a rewarding full time job (especially if). Its sometimes easy to work on x people issues — you can often ghost into a job at a Western organisation where you will be parachuted into impressive and professional roles. Sometimes there is even lots of money in it for you. But to genuinely confine your work to a pro-Assyrian agenda and reject foreign patronage, especially from actors in the region, who will likely compromise or steer your work into dubious territory? No.
This will mean you will likely be broke, become estranged from your family and friends, estranged from your spouse. You will spend most of your time being confused and sullen and periodically bitter. Given a Western context, only rudimentary conditions are set up for younger Assyrians to be nurtured into caring and offering themselves in whatever way they can to our wide-ranging struggle.
Many find a way to do it regardless, such is the compulsion and desire to, but we must collectively make these routes more accessible. Simultaneously, we must deter and extinguish any cultish attitudes and promote a brand of loyalty to ideas and objectives, not people and organisations. The New Assyrian is a free-thinking Assyrian.
Whatever hope we have for enjoying any kind of unity can only be glimpsed at, let alone grasped, by a sharing of work and education which bridges the divide between our people in the East and those in the West, not a herding of cattle with barking dogs and coarse rope.
The Way Ahead
We must lay deep foundations which capture the essence of our whole struggle, not just parts of it. These foundations are critical as we rebuild our house. We are not expansionists, we are genuine reclaimers — we have all the receipts with none of the purchases.
When we have leaders (self appointed or ordained) speak on our issues, we should push them to the absolute limits to meet our national ambitions. If they cannot rise to meet us because of frailty, ambiguity or any obfuscation, we should question their position and authority as a consequence. Too often we label Assyrians as traitors for associating with or pandering to the will of our oppressors, yet some other Assyrians are “pragmatic” and “cunning” when they do the same. This tradition is one I am happy to end.
How can the same act be defined so differently depending on who is doing it? We need to question this, and question any cult-like status an individual, group or organisation has which bears our name. Too much is at stake now to sacrifice our continued existence for misplaced, exaggerated notions of respect.
Nationalist sentiment channels collective pride, dignity, a shared history, and ideas about a shared future, but a nation is ultimately a collection of individuals. Individuals do not emerge from the nation, it is the other way around, and for good reason. If we were to believe individuals emerge from the nation, we reassure ourselves that there will always be more of us, because the nation is seemingly independent of our work.
This is wrong and breeds a fatal complacency.
Our nation is completely dependent on our work as individuals. The imperative for the New Assyrian is thus: I have to take responsibility for myself and my work and do great things in order for my people to survive and do great things.
I cannot rely on other Assyrians for this and I make it a point not to as fiercely as I can — not because I doubt the ability of others, but because I should always do what I can first before expecting the work to be undertaken by others.
There is no Church without its parishioners, there is no state without its citizens and there is no nation without its people.
